Rebekah Brooks accused of approving payments to public officials while editing
The Sun and clearing out old notebooks in the dying days of The News of the
World as prosecution opens case

Rebekah Brooks was “active” in a conspiracy to hack phones while she was editor of The News of the World, the Old Bailey has heard.

She went on to approve “quite large sums” of money to public officials for information after she was appointed to edit The Sun, a jury was told.

The prosecution today began opening its case against Mrs Brooks, who became chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International, and Andy Coulson, who was later David Cameron's communications chief.

Andrew Edis QC, for the Crown, told jurors: "This is the phone hacking trial, but it is not only the phone hacking trial, as you already know…

"It has arisen out of an investigation which started in Jan 2011 into phone hacking at the News of the World. That investigation uncovered other things against various people.

"The investigation and discoveries resulted in the closure of the News of the World. That came about because of the discovery that the phone of [murdered schoolgirl] Milly Dowler had been hacked."

Mr Edis said that Mrs Brooks had been the editor of The News of the World and during this period was "active in the conspiracy" to hack phones.

Later, while editing the Sunday tabloid’s daily sister paper The Sun, she also approved “quite large sums” of money to officials for information, the court heard.

The prosecutor went on to outline charges of perverting the course of justice in the dying days of The News of the World, which was closed in the summer of 2011.

He said it “wasn’t a secret” that an investigation was being carried out into the paper and it was quite clear that the storm wasn’t going to go away.

Mr Edis said that during this period Mrs Brooks and her trusted personal assistant Cheryl Carter obtained Mrs Brooks’ old notebooks.

“They were got out of the archive on the Friday before the last edition of the News of the World was closed. After that the building was sealed and became a crime scene,” he said.

The prosecutor alleged that the notebooks “would have revealed the way she [Mrs Brooks] operated” if they had not “disappeared”.

Mr Edis said phone hacking became a crime in 2000, and was defined by the law as “unlawful interception of communications”.

He added: “In this case that mean listening to other people’s voicemails without their consent, by usually finding the pass code that they need in order to listen to phone messages which have been left for them by someone else.

“The News of the World hired a man who was very good at getting hold of other people’s codes. He was called Glenn Mulcaire - you are going to hear a lot about him.”

Mr Edis said four of the people on trial – Mrs Brooks, Mr Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, and Ian Edmondson – who were charged with conspiring to intercept communications had all been in senior positions at The News of the World.

He went on: “We say that we will be able to show that there was phone hacking at the News of the World, that Glenn Mulcaire did it, that Clive Goodman [the paper's former royal editor] did it and that Ian Edmondson did it.”

The prosecutor said the question was whether the others knew about it, adding that they “controlled the purse strings”.

Evidence suggests that Mr Edmondson had hacked the phones of rival journalists on the Mail on Sunday, the court heard.

Mr Edis told the jury that Mr Goodman had wanted to acquire royal telephone directories and said he had sent emails setting out the price of doing so to Mr Coulson, who allegedly approved it.

When Mr Goodman’s house was searched, 15 royal directories were found, the court heard.

“Within the context of a newspaper in which there was a lot of phone hacking going on and which was intensely interested in the royal family the acquisition of a phone directory is very significant,” the prosecutor said.

Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman were arrested for phone hacking in August 2006, which caused "ripples" and led to the Press Complaints Commission, the newspaper industry watchdog, investigating what had gone on at The News of the World, the court heard.

The prosecutor told the jury: “At that point the balloon goes up as the police have managed to prove some phone hacking. That inquiry was quite restrictive - it only uncovered some phone hacking … but it did have some effect."

Mr Edis said that when Mr Mulcaire was arrested, his home was searched and notebooks containing thousands of pages of evidence were recovered.

He said the documents showed who at the News of the World had “tasked” him with each hacking.

In some cases there was what the prosecutor called a “hacking narrative”, including the mobile number, Pin and various other codes needed to access the target's voicemail.

Mr Edis showed jurors references to Will Young, the singer, Louise Woodward, the British nanny who was tried for the murder of a child in the United States, as well as people with connections to celebrities, such as the brother of a friend of Kate Moss.

He said: “What it shows you in a nutshell is that there were an awful lot of taskings of Glenn Mulcaire. We know what Glenn Mulcaire did - he did phone hacking but did he do anything else?

“One of the things that has been recovered is that while they were paying him £100,000 a year, give or take, no-one seems to have written down what he was producing."

The prosecutor said the evidence in the case would show that some public officials had illegally sold private information to The News of the World and The Sun.

He added: “We are not talking here about what we may call a whistleblower… We are dealing with people who sold information because someone was famous, sometimes a member of the royal family.

“The prosecution say that betraying the public’s trust for money is a crime of misconduct in a public office.”

Mr Edis stressed that said the trial was not “an attack on journalism” but said that journalists were also subject to the law.

“The prosecution accept that it is important in this country that there is a free press,” he said.

“There is no justification of any kind for journalists to get involved in phone hacking that is an intrusion into people’s privacy which is against the law.”

The prosecutor also said it was not right for newspaper journalists to “corrupt” public officials by giving them money for information, adding: “Where there is a payment it is always a crime.”

The public figures targeted by the papers included Sir Paul McCartney and his former wife Heather Mills as well as Jude Law and Siena Miller, the jury heard.

Mr Edis directed the jury to articles they would be looking at, including one in The Sun headlined: “Army bonking in the Congo”.

Closing his submissions for the day, the prosecutor asked the jurors to consider the role of the management at the News of The World and ask whether it as possible that they did not know what was going on.

He said: "The News of the World was a Sunday paper. That means it publishes once a week, or at most 52 times a year. It wasn’t War and Peace, it wasn’t an enormous document.

“It was the sort of document that if you were its editor you could take an interest in its content without too much trouble.

“What you must consider is whether these people were doing their jobs properly in which case they must have known where some of these stories were coming from.

“Either they were doing their jobs properly or at least three – and we say four - of the newsdesk managers were running this operation, with Mulcaire doing a great deal of phone hacking, and the management, the editors knew nothing about it – in which case what on earth were they doing?”

He added: “It was their job to know what was in the paper.”

Mr Justice Saunders, the judge in the case, yesterday told the nine women and three men on the jury that British justice itself was "on trial".

He warned that they must only consider the case on the evidence and arguments presented in court, and not take notice of comments posted on social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Andy Coulson arrives at the Old Bailey

Mrs Brooks, 45, is accused of conspiracy to intercept voicemails, conspiracy to cause misconduct in public office and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

They are standing trial with six other people, including Mrs Brooks’s racehorse trainer husband Charlie, 50, Mr Kuttner, 73, a former News of the World managing editor, Mr Edmondson, 44, a former News of the World head of news, and Mr Goodman, 56.

Also in the dock at Court 12 of the Old Bailey are Ms Carter, 49, and Mark Hanna, 50, News International’s former security chief.